Abusive Friendships Aren't Worth It; Why I Left The Rust Punk Tribe

Hi All,
I have a sad, but necessary announcement: After 6 years of making occasional noise for them, I have parted ways with The Rust Punk Tribe.  I wanted to use this opportunity to hopefully empower those who are in a similar situation to what I was in to leave that part of their lives behind because it isn't worth it.

I met the founder of The Rust Punk Tribe at a local bar, who would later be DJing there, really into old school industrial music like Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten.  I remember he introduced himself as Zach, and wanted to make industrial music together since we both liked a lot of the original, underground artists. We decided to jam, and as I understood it, I had well explained I had a band and needed a new member, Zach had said nothing otherwise, my parents were even willing to let us use their basement:

I am immediately yelled at for trying to monopolize the music because this person wanted to release everything we did together under his solo name at the time: ViVi Vex, despite breaking my synthesizer within one jam session. Zach then makes no attempt to contact me, we speak again by the time we've both moved up to the Denver area. Amends are made, so it seems, but Zach has no place to live because he's getting kicked out of someone's place again. Interestingly enough, Zach's story has gone from wanting to get a number of "body mods," including gender reassignment surgery, nickel poisoning, and scales to become "the next Marilyn Manson" to suddenly saying Zach is Vivian now, but doesn't dare say it's for attention anymore. Poor Zach is still "discriminated against" for ignorantly getting an eye tattoo, my ex and I let him stay with us anyway, and he wants to make music with us in Fill The Void, so hes says, but even though he isn't the only one to suffer from an anxiety disorder in the group, it would be a personal attack on him to have it as subject matter even if the rest of the band wanted to write about it. We had wasted our time adding him to the line-up and our cartoon rendition of the band. Zach then randomly leaves with his mother with little notice, and threatens to call the cops because he left stuff in my ex's car. We once again stop talking for a long period of time...

Fast forward to around 2016, I fall for the fake apologies again, and we're talking; he passes the blame for calling the cops to his mother, and by this point there's supposedly a name for all the various collaborations that Zach has compiled: The Rust Punk Tribe, and he was going to make a huge group of artists big and small to create a giant collaborative album. This idea sounded fantastic, and Zach is able to convince Sin Quirin to record a riff for "Industrial Music Culture" or some similar bs, and even personally told me he purposefully omitted the name Rust Punk Tribe (I can't remember exactly why, I can't say that's entirely on him); The first song released under the name is Outlet, and it's actually just an old ViVi Vex track (one of only a handful to ever exist): Out, with more instruments added, and it still isn't technically complete, I was asked to work on material for it, and I did:

Rave Dave and Marc Urselli sent stems, ViVi complained about the keys Ogilvie sent, and wanted a musician friend of mine, Jeff, to contribute and help cover up some of them, specifically because of how popular Jeff's band was. I asked Jeff to help, genuinely somewhat excited at the time at just the thought of so many artists working together. Zach flaked on Jeff because a band he had toured with's member had supposedly said something that offended him and would be bad for his PR, and I of course got scolded for making any creative suggestions about the track and attempting to record anything other than noise, and had previously gotten scolded because I spent a little free time mastering the previous version to be helpful. Suddenly, this group that's supposed to promote the scene is going to put all of the famous contributors on one track, so it became a vanity project, because ViVi Vex would still be on it, and even on Soundcloud he releases it as ViVi Vex, then lists all the other artists involved instead of crediting The Rust Punk Tribe, and even deleted a stem from someone when sending music to Sin just to get him involved. A track another local artist and I contributed to was released the same way on a compilation, that eventually became unavailable, but we were never informed it had it existed in the first place. ViVi increasingly gets more demanding, and asks all of his friends to start contacting celebrities on his behalf, having the nerve to tell us to say "ViVi Vex invites you" and egotistically makes sure that he asks us to add what famous groups people are from and awards they've won, as if they actually matter to anyone already famous; I didn't do it, I just never told him that. He grew perfectly comfortable with yelling at me if I got an artist interested in the project that wasn't one he specifically wanted involved, and would bitch at me to get him press instead.

Around this time, Zach acts buddy buddy with Combichrist instead of wanting to "never talk to anyone in the aggro scene" and begins recording a "solo album" by hiring people to play because he can't actually play any instruments, except simple MIDI measures on a synth, and brags that Dave is going to be helping free of charge even though his keyboards apparently weren't good enough before, and suddenly anti-everything noise artist extraordinaire ViVi Vex has wanted to record a cleanly produced rock album the whole time. Yet, Marc is upset he worked on something for The Rust Punk Tribe that still isn't out according to ViVi, but I know Marc isn't the only one, and I know that firsthand. But apparently this is the more important project for ViVi at the moment "solo" material made by everyone else and sang over. And in the usual narcissist fashion, ViVi once again name drops famous people yet has to also explain why they're famous, brags about filming at the sand dunes where Stars Wars filmed at in Arizona even though they're public and anyone can take a camera.

Zach is now being discriminated against for being gay, transgender, and an eye tattoo? And begins to post progressively more and more hateful rants on Facebook (and was unsurprisingly banned 30 days for this)  about people based on their skin color, sexual orientation, and "gender," and tried to justify someone berating me for not being pure "white" as "not racist." The final nail in the coffin was recently when I shared a video about making industrial music with ViVi. I just wanted to publicly share a process I was using to show a friend some production tricks, and showcased his own piece at the end. Of course, ViVi promises to share said video, but then criticizes me for not using the same software, FL Studio. I was recently in a car accident, was working on scheduling a surgery, had a hard drive die, had just been screwed financially by a company who paid their employees to lie under oath in court when I sued them after they destroyed thousands of dollars of my property, and had family visiting for holiday. Zach has the nerve to tell me I'm not there for him, and I told him my that issues at hand and seeing my family were more important than making him rich and famous, and that the reason no one is there for him is because he seeks sympathy through petty self sabotage and that most us of can't handle it, or the people who can are so hateful they'll divide from him anyway. He responded by threatening to delete me from Facebook, and before doing so sent a message there that simply reads: "Actually fuck it, fuck you." What a fantastic rebuttal, spoken like a true intellectual with any credibility. ViVi still has unfinished Fill The Void material I wouldn't put past him to steal, but for me it's worth not having to deal with constant mental abuse and compulsive lies.

I apologize to the industrial music, anti-fascist, and LGBT communities for my complacency that allowed a narcissist to exploit them. I apologize to myself for subjecting myself to abuse, and keeping a terrible human being in my life that was likely rubbing off on my character in negative ways, and apologize to everyone for all my negative actions of the past, including those of a similar nature. I also wanted to warn any musicians he may solicit that he looks up to Brian Warner, and is even more willing to throw you away than he was. . .